By DAISY BURTON
Student Reporter
The Amarillo College advising department will soon release a new scheduling program to aid students and advisers alike.“So, the software that we will deploy here to create a more graphically interactive way for students to manage the registration experience and to be able to see the courses that are on their pathway to graduation,” Bob Austin vice president of enrollment management, said.
One of the goals of EduNav is to provide students with a guided pathway while scheduling classes for the upcoming semesters.
“And the idea is that it will affect your behavior in a way that if you know what’s coming, if you’re always anticipating, what’s next if you know what you have to complete, where to start and finish, that it improves the chances that you’ll actually graduate from college,” Austin said.
The application also intends to aid in adviser workload, allowing advisers to focus more on engaging in conversations with students.
“The system knows that you are taking classes that fall within your degree programming— the classes that you need. It would take that manual process kind of out of it for us to have more engagement,” Ernesto Olmos, director of advising, said. “Allowing us to have more meaningful conversations. How are things going? Are there things going on in your life that can prevent you from being successful? How do we provide you with those resources?” Olmos said.
The application is in the early stages of implementation but will most likely be avail,able during the fall semester of 2023 or possibly sooner. “Hopefully we’ll start piloting with some programs in late spring, maybe summer. By next fall we could have it,” Olmos said.
Many members of the advising staff at AC have done extensive research over this application. Some even traveled to other schools that use the program in order to better understand what the application would mean for Amarillo College.
“For the last year and a half we’ve been doing our homework on this company, on the system. We have made phone calls to contact people at other colleges and universities who have deployed it. We’ve asked a lot of questions,” Austin said.
“At the end of May, several of us traveled to Albuquerque and visited Central New Mexico Community College. They have it up and running. They’ve been using it for three years,” he said.
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